Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Skull and Bones historical connections

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was no consensus. --Ezeu 00:36, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Skull and Bones historical connections

As per Kaldari's prod:

1. The length of this article (approx. 250 kb) is unacceptable. This is an encyclopedia article, not a book.
2. The quoted texts are much too long; as such, they may not fall under fair use. Only brief quotes from copyrighted sources may be used without permission.
3. The writing style of the entire article is inappropriate. The whole thing is filled with innuendo, speculations, uncited accusations, and gossip.
4. Finally, and most importantly, virtually nothing is cited. The article makes a number of extraordinary claims about the involvement of the Skull and Bones group in drug dealing, but there are only 20 citations in the entire article, most of which are for auxiliary points. To put that in perspective, that's about one citation for each 12 kilobytes of text.

I do believe that there may be some encyclopedic content which can be discussed here, if appropriate sources can be found, but this wall of text isn't it. Delete. Zetawoof^(ζ) 20:24, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

• Keep It needs to be cleaned up, or restarted all over again. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Andypandy.UK (talk • contribs) .

Gotta remember to press that signature button!--Andeh 20:45, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

• Delete. Nom has it precisely right. This is a titanic (novel-length, damn near) heap of unsourced POV-ridden innuendo with relations to Skull and Bones that's tenuous at best -- for instance, I'm missing the connection that a long section on the ramifications of an ex-Taliban spokesman being an ex-Yalie has to S&B in specific. RGTraynor 21:12, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Holy crap, this is terrible. 250k! However, my answer to all four points brought up in the prod is that this is criteria for cleanup, not deletion. ScottW 00:00, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Taken separately the four points above just indicate a need for cleanup, but taken together, I think they indicate deletion and starting this article over. The article title is also a problem - it should be Skull and Bones conspiracy theories involving opium running. --Joelmills 01:02, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Joelmills is right -- I'm convinced this thing is beyond repair from looking at it and the nominator's statements. Large parts of it may be copyvio because of the inappropriate use of quotes. I can't imagine anyone wanting to take on this monster. Just delete it and begin anew, at a better title as well. Grandmasterka 02:48, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Basically uncleanable, and uninteresting. -- GWO
• Keep but rewrite and shorten. The subject matter is very notable and would make for an interesting article. However the present article violates NPOV, probably NOR as well, and I'd also check closely to make sure it isn't copyvio, too. But the purpose of AFD is to vote on whether articles should be deleted due to worthiness of content, and IMO that isn't the case here. As ScottW indicated, the points noted by the nominator indicate an article in bad need of repair, but not necessarily deletion. 23skidoo 13:35, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep and massively cleanup. — RJH (talk) 15:30, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Holy crap is right. It appears that the vast majority of the article has been written by a single writer during several brief but intense periods of activity between January and March,[1][2] suggesting either some serious copyvio/plagiarism or something approaching logorrhea. Even the table of contents reads like the label on a bottle of Dr. Bronner's Soap. Almost all of this article is wholly beyond repair, and what isn't should be merged back into Skull and Bones, from whence it was spawned on March 11. —phh (^t/_c) 18:17, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
• Delete massively long conspiracycruft. Wikipedia is not a book publisher. KleenupKrew 00:18, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Too much valid content to delete. --JJay 01:44, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
• Transwiki to Wikibooks. Wikipedia is not a publisher. Keep if trimmed to less than 30KB. Stifle (talk) 11:31, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
• Delete without merge or transwiki; an extreme case of WP:SOAP and WP:NOR. Angus McLellan (Talk) 14:34, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
• Delete, smells like copyvio, as well as unsalvageable POV. --Dhartung | Talk 07:44, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.